Turtles all the way up and down
An interesting Tumblr that has come out of late is Rich Kids of Instagram. Essentially self-explanatory, it captures the 1%er youth (probably more accurately .1% Youth) at moments of play, drinking, diving off helicopters into sea water-basically the ostentatious displays of wealth that you know they go all out for, but rarely see (reality television is different. That is carefully choreographed celebrification). Anyway, someone made a passing comment that it was “riot bait”, and I’m sure if Marie Antoinette had a Tumblr it would look, certainly, very similar to this.
Some of the pictures-well, okay, most-are indeed annoying. In a way the Richie Riches are performing and pantomining for the camera, with words to match. Their hashtags often dutifully list the brand names. One has an Instagram profile saying “Whoever said less is more probably never had quite enough ‘more’”.
Another says “Do you have a horse in your backyard? Didn’t think so.”
It’s the ultimate apotheosis of the “fuck you, I’ve got mine” mindset that is the rotten bedrock of our financial system, our political system, our sorely lacking sense of community.
In a related note, it’s been recently calculated that the ultra-rich have $21 TRILLION in offshore accounts to evade taxes.
As the young and asinine try to stagger with wealth, we are instead staggered just by how much the RKOI crowd’s parents have completely hoodwinked the system and fucked everyone completely, utterly over.
And in the middle class, here in America it is admittedly a precarious position-these RKOI’ers stretching up into infinity…and yet, it is easy to forget that for most of the world, middle America is itself ostentatious. The working poor, the refugees-they rarely enter our calculations. And we ourselves have more than we need. So in this middle distance we (more or less) stand, wanting to tear down those above us while at the same time keeping those below us at bay.
